Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

And to us it all seemed that it was happening to other people somewhere else. Until we got the call from an assistant to the buyer in the tailoring department of Gold’s of 5th Avenue. This was one of the most prestigious tailors in the world. They dressed presidents and movie stars, pop idols and royalty.

The way it worked was clients would get measured up by Gold’s in New York, choose their material and style of suit, then the cloth would be sent off to Yves Saint Laurent, or Armani, or whoever, to have it cut. The suits might cross the Atlantic umpteen times during the course of several fittings, and then the finishing would be done by Gold’s themselves. Their customers paid thousands, sometimes tens of thousands.

And Gold’s wanted to introduce an exclusive line of Ranish Tweed as an option to offer clients. Designer suits in the hottest new tweed on the market. They wanted to fly us to New York, the assistant told us. They wanted us to bring samples and designs, and meet with the head of the tailoring department, Jacob Steiner, to discuss exactly what was going to suit Gold’s needs. They would, she said, reserve us first-class seats on Virgin Atlantic and put us up at the Waldorf Astoria.

I can remember dancing around the room after taking that call, and having trouble finding my breath to tell Ruairidh. The Waldorf Astoria ! I had only ever seen or heard about the legendary New York hotel in the movies. And someone was going to pay for us to stay there! And flying first class to New York? Something you could only dream about. Who could afford that? Certainly not us. It seemed no time at all since we had taken the bus down to Lee’s show at London Fashion Week and stayed in the cheapest hotel we could find.

How could this be happening to me and Ruairidh?

But it was, and it did. We arrived in New York on a steamy hot summer’s day in July to be met at the airport by Mr Steiner himself. Immaculately suited, wearing the whitest shirt I had ever seen, and the most delicious plum-red tie, he was the personification of charm. Not a greasy or sleazy or manufactured kind of charm, but a real charisma that genuinely reflected the man himself.

I suppose he must have been in his early sixties at that time. He reeked of expensive aftershave and Cuban cigars (I only found out later they were Cuban when he confessed to having his own illicit supply line from the Caribbean island in contravention of the US ban).

‘Guys,’ he said, and shook both our hands warmly, ‘I cannot tell you what a great pleasure it is to meet you at last. I was blown away by Ranish Tweed the first time I saw it. But when I felt it, actually ran it through my fingers...’ He seemed to run out of words to express his feelings. ‘I can only say there have been very few times in my life that I have genuinely felt I was touching the future. That’s how it was for me when I first handled Ranish Tweed.’

An assistant collected our luggage from the carousel, and Mr Steiner led us out to a waiting stretch limo. He slid into the back and sat opposite us.

‘I want us to have a relationship that is going to make our suits in Ranish Tweed the most expensive and exclusive in the world. Which means we gotta be friends. We need to understand each other, to have a feeling for what each of us is about. That’s why you’re here. I want to get to know you guys, and for you to know what it is that makes me tick.’ He opened a small refrigerator and tossed ice cubes into three glasses, before filling them with whisky and topping them off with a splash of soda. ‘Glenturret,’ he said, handing us our glasses. ‘Oldest distillery in Scotland, I’m told. So it should be good.’ He raised his glass. ‘To Ranish.’

We echoed his toast and sipped from our foaming glasses. I had never tasted whisky and soda before, and was surprised at how good it was. It was to be the first of many.

‘Sit back and enjoy, meine Kinder . First we get to know each other. Then we do business.’

The Waldorf Astoria exceeded all my expectations. The white stone building in Park Avenue seemed to drip gold, a constant procession of limousines and taxis drawing up beneath its extravagant canopy, an enormous Stars and Stripes furling and unfurling in the slow-motion movement of hot air. After the cool brisk summer winds of Lewis, New York City seemed burdened by the weight of its own heat and humidity.

We hurried from the air-conditioned bubble of our stretch limo, through the hot, wet, slap-in-the-face air on the sidewalk, and into the almost chilly atmosphere of the hotel itself. Up steps and into a vast marbled area of lobby and lounge. Our room was huge, but to my mind gently disappointing. It had all the trappings of grandeur. Heavily embroidered curtains, a gold-braided bedspread, antique furniture. And yet there was something tired about it all, careworn. Rotting wooden window frames, tashed wallpaper and worn carpets. But nothing could take the gloss off our excitement.

We were in our room only for as long as it took to deposit our luggage and slip the bellboy an extravagant tip, and then it was off again in the limo to Central Park, where Mr Steiner had arranged a horse-and-carriage tour.

‘You wanna get to know me?’ he said. ‘First you gotta get to know my city.’

For the second time in my life I felt like royalty. This time in the kind of open horse-drawn carriage I had seen convey the Queen and visiting heads of government along the Mall on State occasions. Steel-rimmed wagon wheels clattered over the metalled surface of roads that wound through this extraordinary rectangle of greenery in the heart of urban Manhattan. There was something timeless in the clip-clop of our horse’s hooves, and startling in the red-trimmed livery set against the shining chestnut of its flanks.

Mr Steiner told our driver that his spiel was not needed, and he gave us his own running commentary as we rounded the Pond and passed the Wollman Rink, which in winter, he said, would be alive with skaters in scarves and hats, wrapped against a cold which was unimaginable in this heat. Past the carousel and the children’s zoo. Skirting the literary walk, the sun slanting off all the angles of Shakespeare’s bronze. The Angel of the Waters Fountain, Cherry Hill and then, most poignantly, Strawberry Fields. This quiet area of the park dedicated to the memory of John Lennon, fresh flowers laid with love on the black and white circle of stone marquetry with the legend, Imagine , at its heart.

Only two-and-a-half miles long and half a mile wide, wherever you were in the park you could almost always see the skyscrapers pressing in all around its perimeter. And now, here we were, right opposite the distinctive Dakota Building where Lennon had been shot by a deranged fan. I was, I think, only four years old when it happened, but my dad had been a big Beatles fan, and we had watched all the VHS videos of The Beatles’ movies. A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Yellow Submarine . I knew every song, and had treasured the twinkling-eyed John Lennon like some kind of big brother. I cried when I heard he was dead.

Mr Steiner took us then to Gold’s on Fifth Avenue, in Midtown. I’d had no real sense of what exactly to expect of Gold’s, and found all my preconceptions swept away by the discovery that it was actually a luxury department store. Its various departments occupied seven floors, with galleries that ran around a central well at the heart of the building.

The tailoring department was on the fifth floor, and staff had been expecting us. They lined up inside the door to shake our hands, each one meeting our eyes with such warmth that I have rarely been made to feel so welcome. Mr Steiner took us on a whistle-stop tour of the facilities. ‘We’ll come back tomorrow for the real work,’ he said. ‘But right now we gotta hurry. I’ve got us tickets to a dance musical at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway.’